Crossfire

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@Silver Carrot@iTem@superservo27

"There's no need for this" SAL said simply "You'll be fairly compensated. I've calculated up a total based on market price for each of these components, and added 3% extra for your patience. Add on the A35 axels, wirings, flow valves and crankshifts that my companion just spotted as well. Calculating..... rounding to nearest figure... how does 12,000 credits sound?"

Off to the side of his vision, SAL typed out a message, ran it through the background process of his vocal transponder and broadcast it over to Harrison's earpiece.

"Use Focus. Check For Quality. Tap foot twice if good, three for not. Hurry.

-----------------------

@sntabe@TheEvanCat@Rultaos

Over at the ship, Stryker was just finishing up the tour for Ryan and Mazie, they had looped all the way around the major areas over the course of roughly 20 minutes and had finally arrived back at the crew quarters.
"..... most of the crew is gone tonight, I gave them the night for some R&R before we head back out for the next job, so you'll meet em later. For now though, I'll leave you both to get straightened away." he jerked a thumb over to the gaping door hole where Room 1 was supposed to be.
"As you can tell, Room 1's a little out of sorts, long story, gotta try and fix that someday. Most of the rooms are free, only number 2 on the right side of the hall is occupied, 9 and 11 are free down in back on the left, just take whichever ones you want of the one's that're free, I'll catch up with you guys later."

He spotted Benny wandering out from the kitchen, and waved to grab the Scotsman's attention.
"Benny, how's it going man? Listen, how about you and me dodge out for a drink? I'm supposed to be meeting someone, wouldn't mind some backup in case it goes sideways."

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@TheEvanCat To finally make it official- accepted!

@ArkmageddonCat If you're all done, also accepted!

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@TheEvanCat I'm currently in the process of doing a plot summary of every critical event that'll be posted up in the beginning of the OOC, but it's a little ways off from completion. In the meantime, I can give you the cliff notes version:

My Hider

The Alliance begins Project Revenant by gathering up an initial crew of bloodthirsty and ruthless criminal-types. Their first job is to head to a 'no-man's land' solar system decimated by the Corvais War 5 years ago. A station resembling a mining outpost similar to the ones used by a company based in Federation territory has popped up there. It's very presence is a violation of Galactic Law, but instead of going through official channels, the Alliance (thinking correctly that it's secretly a Federation military outpost, set up to spy on the Alliance) sends in the Revenant. After a harrowing battle that ends with a few deaths, some revelations, and an overwhelming sense of 'how the hell are these people ever going to work as a team?'

The next 'job' was pretty simple, head into the lawless Deadzone and pick up some new crew members and a resupply from an undercover Alliance outpost. the resupply contained orders for the next mission, which commenced after a short period of downtime for the crew to get to know one another. En route to the next job, the ship was beset by catastrophic systems failure. The crew had to band together to survive and keep the ship in one piece, talk about a team-building exercise. It didn't end perfectly though, a couple of crew members were injured in the efforts to save the ship, and their best chance of survival was placing them into deep comas. The next mission was a massive undertaking: a 5-stage plan in which the Revenant paired up with a team of mercenaries to assassinate a space pirate 'king' who happened to be an ex-Federation general. This mission literally took forever to do, so I'm gonna have to double back and fill in the details later, but as for the ending.... it didn't end awesomely. We lost a ton of crew members, along with the entire mercenary group (who were mostly just some leftover character ideas I wanted to use if we're being honest) and some members of the surviving crew were changed in ways that aren't necessarily all revealed yet.

We did a timeskip of approximately 8 months, during which we said the crew took on another 10 jobs or so, but for several weeks they'd just been drifting aimlessly, with no real objective in sight. Oh, also the 2 crew members who had gone into comas woke up and were recovering. They finally get word from their handlers about a mission (after picking up a pair of new crew mates) and jetted off to the edge of Alliance territory, where a more or less abandoned colony was in the midst of a raid by a faction of space pirates who acted like vikings. The objective? To gain access to an underground lab and evacuate the scientists there, who had supposedly just stumbled on some big development in their research. After making it inside the facility (though not without being discovered by the viking-pirates) Stryker (the captain) discovered that the big development was that these scientists had figured out a way to harness dark matter energy. Though they naively thought that the Alliance would use this scientific breakthrough to solve a potential energy crisis, Stryker knew they'd only turn it into a devastating weapon- A black hole generator. Despite his orders, Stryker decided that no one deserves access to a weapon of that caliber, and he gave his team orders to murder the scientists. They did that and rigged the lab to explode, erasing all evidence of what they'd done.

The team has just arrived at Helios Station for a night of R&R, resupply, and picking up new recruits for the team.

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@BKburke@sntabe

"Varrus. Things were going a little too smoothly recently, figures the Alliance would choose now to release you." Stryker spat, refusing to let up how much seeing the Illithid again had rattled him. He cast a glance over to the amused looking Alliance officer.
"Any chance I can request he not be allowed on the ship, for the safety of the others?"
"Gonna take a wild guess and say that request is denied." Casey drawled "You two have a history?"
Looking back over his shoulder to observe Varrus walking away, Stryker quietly muttered "Something like that."

Shaking the memories out of his head, he turned to greet the other two new recruits, who were patiently waiting off to the side.
"Ryan Rosq and Maviet.. Maza.. sorry, no offense but I'm not even gonna attempt to pronounce that, I'll only butcher it. You go by Mazie it says here? Ok, that's easier. Well, welcome to the party. Call me Stryker. Grab your stuff and follow me, we can get properly acquainted as I show you around the Revenant."

@iTem@superservo27@Silver Carrot

SAL and his mechanically-inclined companions strolled casually through a noisy bazaar of makeshift market stalls. Helios was widely known as a pretty centralized trading post for those travelling through the Deadzone. Odds are they'd find the parts needed to get the Revenant back up to 110% among the scrappers, junkers and scavengers that made a living off the hollowed-out corpses of destroyed ships.

"Perhaps it would be best to spread out and search for the parts we need. Stryker has given me full credit authority, so I interpret that as meaning price is no object, as long as we acquire top-quality parts. Wait, hold position."

As they had strolled past a stall, SAL's ocular scanners had picked up serial numbers that matched some of the parts they required. Even some that matched materials he needed to deal with Tobi's instability. Interesting. He stared down at the name assigned to the stall and processed the proper pronunciation.

"Qoorb, greetings, I believe you will be able to accommodate our needs. My companions and I are seeking an Atom Flux and burn regulators compatible with a TX-750 drive core. We also require carbon-fused transmission piping and a 50-Grade coolant tank, if you have it."

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@Gardevoiran@Xandrya@t2wave@BKburke@Rultaos@iTem@superservo27@sntabe@Silver Carrot

39 Hours Later

The Revenant jolted slightly as she entered the artificial gravity field of Helios Station, one of the larger (and relatively speaking, safer) locations in the Deadzone. Primarily known as a trader's market, where the rule of the merchants was law, Stryker had chosen it as a rest stop for a few reasons, though to be fair, it was mostly for the homebrew liquor a tavern down there specialized in.

He confirmed docking with the harbormaster and set the ship into landing protocol. The behemoth ship shivered and shook as she came down onto the landing pad and the engines cut out. The general atmosphere on board was that of a crew itching to breathe some fresh (artificial) air, Stryker included. Grayson and Amy had been checked out of med bay, though neither of them was quite at 100% yet, the doc had cleared them to be out and about, provided they didn't start any bar fights or brawls in the street. Tibulass had checked out in all scans, though heshe hadn't been awake much in the last day and a half. Everyone else seemed good, though they were all in dire need of this little break. Stryker rolled his chair back as he stood up and stretched before tapping in to the ship-wide comms.

"Alright everyone, we made it. So just like I said on the way here, it's gonna take some time to refuel and cycle in fresh water. We've got a complete resupply coming in too, food, med supplies, ammo, and everything else that was requisitioned. And since we're military-ish, I've decided to invoke the ancient military rite of shore leave, so just like the name says, the next 18 hours are yours to do with as you please, all I'm gonna ask is that if you're not coming back to the ship tonight to sleep, ping me on the comms, so we don't leave without you in the morning."

Leaving the cockpit, he almost immediately ran into SAL. The robot must have been coming to speak with him.

"What's up?" he greeted.
With his usual blank expression, SAL replied "The engineers did what they could, but some sections of the engines are still not operating at 100%. The drive core's Atom Flux and burn regulators in particular are approaching critical levels of decay."
"I figured something like that was happening, could feel her shuddering a little ever since I took the wheel. Tell ya what, I'm transferring credit authority over to you, head out into the markets and find those parts. Take Koren and Harrison with you if they want to help."
With a nod, SAL headed off. Stryker was halfway down the hall to his room for some much needed shut-eye when his datapad pinged, a new message from the Alliance.

Attention Revenant Captain,
Got a few more for you, we've shipped them off to Helios Station, so they ought to arrive just before you do. Dossiers attached. They're in the care of First Officer Casey, you should find him at these coordinates...
The message auto-deleted as soon as Stryker tapped the coordinates, he nodded and tucked the datapad into his pocket, sighing as he turned on his heel and headed off to collect the new recruits.

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@sntabe@Silver Carrot Just to make it official: both accepted!

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@iTem@BKburke@superservo27

SAL sat silent for a moment, analyzing and re-analyzing how his conversation with Tobi had gone. All signs pointed to 'poorly' with probable cause being that he hadn't explained himself clearly enough. He set up an automatic scan of the downloaded combat data and headed off to locate Tobi, nearly running into Harrison and Koren out in the hallway.

"Excellent, I needed to speak with you both. With you taking over most of the engineering duties, I thought it prominent to make a copy of all my reports onto the terminal in the Engine room. Please make particular note to read the latest on the drive core. A full breakdown is within the file but to cut to the root of the matter- it's been leaking for some time, not to a critical degree, but enough that it has affected the ship's maximum acceleration rate. Perhaps with your expertise, you could make the necessary repairs or locate a new one when we reach Helios Station."

As he spoke, he attemped to ping Tobi's internal communicator, passing along a short message containing a simple request to return to the lab.

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@sntabe Of course!

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@Rultaos@iTem@T2wave@Gardevoiran

"Take it easy folks, give him- sorry.. her now I guess, some room." Stryker said, reaching out to lower Benny's outstretched arm "Tib's been working on this project for a little while now, just a little shocking to see now that it's no longer just a theory. That, and the body you ended up in. Gotta say, when you first started talking about it, I figured you meant just grabbing some sad sack's body off a morgue slab, not a berserker from the Valkyrie clan. That is gonna take a bit of time to get used to. And Matija's right, maybe Dr. Matthias ought to take a look at you, make sure everything worked out ok."

"Well this is all very exciting, but like you said Tib, ship isn't gonna pilot itself all day, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I am dying for a drink that didn't come from an Alliance distillery, so next stop, Helios Station." As he made to walk out, he stopped up for a minute and leaned in for a private word with Harriet.
"Perhaps you should do a more... thorough scan, just to be 100% certain she is who she says" he whispered with a pointed look over to the brain floating in the jar next to Tibulus' former body before heading off to set their course.

Revenant: A Sci-Fi Adventure (Always Accepting!)

@Rultaos@Gardevoiran@iTem@t2wave

Stryker was about to reply to Benny when the mysterious voice rang out over the intercom.

"Sooo... Any otha' secret projects we should be aware of while we're here?" Benny asked.

At a loss for words, he looked around at the others. The look on his face told it all, he was just as confused as any of them.

"Not that I'm aware...... oh wait... No way." The realization hit him all at once. Still talking, but mostly to himself, he turned on his heel and waved for the others to follow him as he marched out of the War Room and down the hall to the med bay.

"He did it, he actually did it." The captain was still muttering to himself as the med bay door slid open and he walked inside. Immediately his eyes were drawn to the drawn curtains around a pair of beds, presumably where Amy and Grayson were resting up. Finally he slid his vision across the aisle to the surgical robot Tibulus had built, the Funganoid himself lying immobile on the operating slab and the redheaded woman staring at herself in the washing basin mirror. The war paint had been washed away, but her build was unmistakably that of a Skaldurm vanguard. Stryker slowly stepped closer and cleared his throat before speaking.

"Tibulus? That you in there?"